The end of Winfly....

Sorry for not writing lately. The research has kept me very busy. This blog thing is a new “responsibility” for me that I haven’t entirely figured out how to fit in my schedule yet. Anyway….

So, it’s the end of the Winfly season. Tomorrow is the big day when the Antarctic sky will fill with airplanes. Well, not really “fill” with airplanes, but 2 planes will be landing on the ice runway tomorrow. Both of the planes will be spewing out people and supplies and, if we are really lucky, fresh food. We’ve been in Antarctica for about 6 weeks so far. The Winfly season has been very kind to us in terms of the scientific research accomplished and the overall Antarctic experience. With less people on base during Winfly, life has much more of a family feel to it. You get a chance to know people better. On the science side of things, with less scientific research groups here, we get more attention and, more importantly, more space than we will come Mainbody (Mainbody is the word used to describe when Winfly is over and operations at McMurdo Station go into full swing). In fact, with the start of Mainbody our lab now has to move out of our cozy little office space as well as our aquarium laboratory. Basically, we have to share more. Not a problem, but we have grown to enjoy the extra space afforded to us by the Winfly season.

A great thing about Winfly is the chance to experience the Antarctic night. The stars are brilliant and if you are really lucky, you’ll get to see the Southern lights (aurora australialis). We weren’t lucky, but hey, the stars were great. The sun remains very low on the horizon during the late winter period as well. This creates sunrises and sunsets that can last for hours on end. At this point though, the night as all but evaporated. As I write this it’s 10pm and the sun has just set behind the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, creating a twilight condition that will probably last the next 3-4 hours. At which point it will get just a bit darker and stars will be seen, but only briefly as the sun will shortly begin to rise again. As the days continue, the sun’s dip below the horizon will get shallower and shallower as the twilight darkness becomes less and less. Finally, the sun will not drop below the horizon, but briefly disappear only behind the trans-Antarctic Mountains. By mid-October the sun no longer dips low enough to be obscured by anything, at which point it will simply run circles around us getting higher and higher in the sky, providing constant daylight. Only in late February will the sun venture below the horizon again.

At this point I’m trying to get some pictures together showing the evening and night time look of McMurdo. Cause after that, it'll be nothing but daytime photography. Hopefully in a couple of days I’ll have those ready for you and have the link to them posted here.